Poem for the moment

The recent revelations from the Save the Children report should not be forgotten:
Since 1990 child mortality has jumped 150% and no other country in the world has seen such a sharp rise. One in eight Iraqi children died before reaching their fifth birthday in 2005.
In addition to the children lost there are the orphans.

When I read the following poem this week it stayed with me.
(from Modern Poetry of the Arab World ed. and trans. by Abdullah al-Udhari)

My Apologies by Buland Al-Haidari

My apologies, my honored guests,
The newsreader lied in his last bulletin:
There is no sea in Baghdad
Nor pearls
Not even an island,
And everything Sinbad said
About queens of the jinn
About the ruby and coral islands
About the thousand thousands flowing from the sultan's hand
Is a myth born in the summer heat
Of my small town
In the burnt-up shadows of the midday sun
In the silent nights of the exiled stars.
We used to have
A sea, shells, pearls
And a polished moon
And fishermen returning in the evening;
We used to have,
Said the newsreader's last bulletin,
An innocent, dream paradise;
For we, my honored guests,
Lie to be born again,
Lie to stretch in our long history
The myth told by Sinbad -
We used to have
A sea, shells, pearls
And the hour of birth.

My apologies, my honored guests,
The newsreader lied in his last bulletin:
There is no sea in Baghdad
Nor pearls
Not even an island.